Harry Mack hits us with ‘Contents Under Pressure’

Harry Mack (Artist Submitted)

Harry Mack has become one of the hottest artist to sweep the scene lately and everyone is talking about him. Naturally, I had to take a moment and get behind the upcoming debut and get to know the man behind the music.

Beginning his rap career in the sixth grade going by the moniker of “MC Wunder”, Harry Mack’s fire for music and hip hop has been fanned from an early age growing up in Portland, he explains:

Oh Man, when I was young I sort of fell in love with the music, just in a really organic way. I have an older sister, she’s three years older than me so when we were growing up in Portland, she sort of turned me on to  Jamin 95.5, which was the hip hop station in Portland at the time. I didn’t really know who I was listening to. I didn’t know any of the artists’ names or anything like that, but I knew that I was really feeling the music. I just loved the way it sounded and the way it made me feel. I was already kind of a young budding musician at that point. I started playing violin when I was seven and, I started playing the drums in fourth or fifth grade. So I was already really getting into music. So, once my sister turned me on to Jamin 95.5 and I started hearing all the hip hop music that was being played on the radio at the time, it just sort of took off from there. I knew that I wanted to try my hand at it and see what I could come up with.

By the time he got to high school, what he came up with was a crew called State of Mind which consisted of himself, his buddy Brady B who was learning to DJ, Elan (Mighty Misc) another MC and a budding DJ/ Producer Jack Baars (DJ Malfunktion). The team, around their sophomore year in high school executed the hustle and grind of creating and selling their homemade CDs with titles written in sharpie, earning and saving enough money to begin producing their own live events:

Mack shared a bit about that early move saying,

So now we were a four-man crew and we went by State Of Mind. That was a really exciting time because that’s when we actually started trying to really produce our own shows in a more official way. I remember one show, in particular, we rented a spot in Portland called Hawthorne Theater, which is still operating now and at the time you could rent it for like, $600. And so we had been selling our CD, at school and everything, we were selling them for $5 a pop and they were just very unofficial CDRs with the title in Sharpie,

And so when it came time to do a show, we went over to Hawthorne Theater and we made the payment of $600 to rent the venue in cash and we didn’t even think to go get bigger bills. So we literally handed the guy a wad of fives and ones from selling our CDs and, he was pissed. He was like, wow, are you guys really giving me $600 in fives and ones right now, you know, like, what kind of amateur hour performance is this?!

I think he was kind of bitter and he started kinda trying to underhandedly cut us down a little bit. He was talking like, this is good, you know, this is a good move. Probably lose money on it, probably don’t get too many people out for your first show, but you know, you gotta try, you gotta do something. And so we’re sitting there quiet, feeling all bad about ourselves and as it turned out, the show was popping! Man, we sold it out, it was packed and it was good. It was a super lit show, it was amazing. You know, the thing was we were in high school, so the fact that we had rented a venue and all the high schoolers could come out there and party and they knew, it’s no parents, that we’re out there doing our thing, we were able to really blow it up, not just at our high school but at other schools as well. We doubled our money on it or something like that. So it was a huge success for us and just a lot of fun and, and really inspiring for us to know that like, okay, we kind of have a buzz and we have a little bit of a scene that we’re building here. So yeah, that was the vibe.

Take a listen at his exclusive with my brother Jerry Doby for The Hype Magazine and find out what the takeover is all about.